Shattered Skies. Alice Henderson

      Chapter 1

      The submarine lurched sickeningly to the right, the klaxon blaring above H124’s head. Flashing red light filled the tiny space as she grabbed onto one of the bunks to steady herself.

      “Captain to the conn! Battle stations!” someone cried from the command deck. The captain squeezed through the doorway from the next chamber and pressed by her, hurrying to his station.

      “What is it?” H124 called to Raven, grabbing onto the bunk edges to move forward to the next compartment. Raven stood in the doorway to the command deck, his long black hair falling into his eyes as he struggled to keep his balance. “I don’t know!”

      She moved next to him, peering toward the command deck, and heard the sonar tech shout, “Torpedo incoming bearing 150!”

      The captain was quick to respond. “All ahead full, come left to 240, depth twenty meters!”

      The sub lurched to the side and she caught herself against the fuselage. They waited in a tense ensuing silence, then once again the command deck burst into action.

      “Torpedo incoming bearing 170!” the sonar tech shouted from her station.

      “All ahead full, come left to 260, depth thirty meters!” the captain yelled.

      “Aye!” the helmsman called back.

      Once again the sub swayed to one side with a sudden burst of speed. But the enemy craft had been too close to them when it launched its projectile. She heard something clang dully against the sub, and seconds later a violent explosion wracked the submarine. The sea around them erupted into a tempest of bubbles.

      “Glancing blow, sir,” the weapons officer reported.

      “Is there a breach?”

      “Doesn’t look like it, sir,” the officer responded.

      “We need to neutralize that thing now! Fire torpedo tube one!” shouted the captain.

      “Fire torpedo tube one, aye,” shouted the weapons officer.

      H124 could hear the clanking of boots on metal as crew members hurried back to the torpedo bay. Moments later she heard a dull thunk as a torpedo left one of the bays.

      “We’re too damn close. Brace for the shockwave!” the captain called, and H124 grabbed onto a metal handle. But an impact didn’t come.

      “Missed the target, sir,” said the weapons officer.

      “Damn!” cursed the captain. “Fire torpedo tube two!”

      “Aye!” called the weapons officer, relaying the order to the crew in the torpedo bay.

      Much quicker this time, she heard the dull thunk of a torpedo leaving the bay.

      “Direct hit!” called the weapons officer.

      “Brace for the shockwave!” shouted the captain. H124 gripped the handle and Raven held onto the door frames to either side of her. His dark brown eyes met hers in the red flashing gloom of the submarine, and then the entire vessel rocked violently to one side, tossed in the concussive wave from the explosion. She struggled to remain standing. He grabbed her arm. They steadied each other as the sub shuddered and fell still again.

      “Enemy craft disabled, captain,” reported the weapons officer.

      Raven turned and approached the command deck.

      They’d connected with this group of ocean-going Rovers in the hopes of finding the next piece of equipment for their mission.

      An asteroid was careening toward the earth on a collision course. It had fragmented into four pieces in antiquity. Two pieces were still on the way: a smaller fragment soon to hit the Pacific Ocean, and the main asteroid, which was heading for a devastating land strike. Though they had a blast deflection craft to deliver a nuclear detonation and throw it off course, they still had no nuclear weapon and no way of launching the craft into space. But they hoped with this Rover crew journey, that this would soon change.

      A few weeks before, Onyx and Orion had finished recovering much of the data from the disks and drives that H124 had picked up at the university under New Atlantic, along with the drives they’d recovered from the various aeronautic facilities where they’d found pieces of the blast deflection craft.

      One of the monumental tasks before them had been building a rocket that could deliver the blast deflection craft into space. Then they’d lucked out. On one of the disks, they’d found plans for a launch vehicle that could take off from the ground and fly directly into space, no rocket needed. It was the craft designed to replace something called “the shuttle program.” But the new program hadn’t gotten far. One had been built, and then all the funds from the project had been diverted into military spending.

      The vehicle, named the A14, had been built and housed in a facility that was a mere ten feet above sea level on what had then been the east coast. But as the temperatures had risen due to anthropogenic warming, so too had sea levels risen to disastrous heights, inundating coastal cities and flooding facilities like this one.

      The vehicle they searched for now might have been more than two hundred feet below the waves, lying there for so many years it felt futile to even hope that it was still down there and still reparable, even if they’d have to salvage parts to rebuild it. But they had to try.

      They’d been lucky that a group of Rovers lived in the area, people Raven had met as a kid when he’d traveled around with his parents, checking on the experimental forests that the Rovers had planted, trying to restore some areas to what they’d been before.

      He’d contacted them, and they’d agreed to help.

      “What was that thing?” Raven asked the captain, an older, sharply dressed man with a mane of white hair that spilled down his shoulders. In the gloom, his pale face hovered above a thick black woolen turtleneck sweater and black woolen jacket. H124 didn’t know how he wasn’t sweating to death. Even his pants were wool, and he wore knee-high boots and a fancy hat with a gold emblem on its brow depicting a porpoise cavorting between two curling waves. “Ancient nuclear AUV. Autonomous underwater vehicle,” the man said. “A long time ago, they were designed to patrol these waters and disable any enemy ships in the area.”

      “And they think we’re an enemy ship?” H124 asked.

      He nodded. “Back when they were built, friendlies were tagged with an old identify friend-or-foe system so the AUVs knew who was supposed to be there. If you don’t have a tag, you’re a hostile.”

      “And these things are still operational?” Raven asked, his voice wavering. “After all this time?”

      “They’re nuclear-powered, like this sub. They’ll go and go until their fuel gives out. This area’s full of them, probably put in place to guard this very facility you want to break into.” He glanced thoughtfully toward the sonar station. “This place used to be a heavily guarded base full of top secret projects in development. They employed hundreds of these AUVs to patrol the water. We’ve disabled quite a few over the years, but countless others are probably still out there. We’ve got to be careful unless we want to end up in a watery grave.”

      “What the hell was that?” came an out-of-breath voice behind them. H124 turned to see Dirk framed in the doorway, a collection of wires in one hand and a multitool in the other. Perspiration beaded on his sepia skin, soaking into his long purple and black dreadlocks.

      “Apparently ancient tech that wants us dead,” Raven